


The Chime Of Liberty's Bell

by Garrick



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, American Revolution, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Inspired by TURN:Washington's Spies, Revolutionary War
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-08
Updated: 2019-04-27
Packaged: 2019-07-28 08:27:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 19,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16237865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Garrick/pseuds/Garrick
Summary: August 1776. With independence declared, George Washington has brought his Continental troops to defend the important port city of New York. The British have landed and with the support of Loyalist militia begin to attack troops on Long Island from both front and flank.The battle is huge and fierce but is one of many conflicts which will no doubt change the fate of the colonies.Members of both armies attempt to gain advantage and supremacy through intelligence and intrigue. Tories and Whigs both keep vigilant watch for enemy sympathizers and spies in a land fraught with division.





	1. Chapter 1

Musket fire rumbles like thunder in the trees. Their blasts echo off of the wood and the foliage all around, broken only by cries of pain and anger and the rustles of running men.

Sun rays pierce into the thickness of the forest as musket balls whistle past, some skim branches and bark which fall like hail across the skin of Yankee riflemen in their entrenched position.

He can see them hold, not too far away. The buff and the blue of their uniform’s stained in more places than not with the thick brown of mud, standing against the smoke and the sea of grey-green on the top of the ridge. One figure raises himself to aim, only to fall to the ground again in a deathly clatter. He surveys the edge and notices a familiar character. Then he knows what he needs to do.

Hugging the ground and the passing trees for brief moments he sprints with all his strength over to the position. He know what his role is. The sprint is made all the easier due to lack of equipment, he traces his mind and remembers it is somewhere at the bottom of the lakes the few dozens had escaped through.

Within reach he rolls unceremoniously into the position and is instantly confronted with balled fists that throw him roughly to the ground, a saber pressed harshly against his neck.

The man above him studies his face for a split second before a look of annoyance hits his countenance and he’s thrown back and into cover.

“Jon?” the other man rasps, his breath is gone but he returns to the hard work, years of drilling having built the routine into him. “I thought you’d left, taken the boats?”

He doesn’t answer immediately. Just grabs the cartridge bag and the attached leather straps from the dead soldier in front of him, avoiding looking at the face, so he wouldn’t find out if it was anyone he knew. He takes the rifle as well. It isn’t his, but it’s thick wood and was the accustomed Pennsylvanian style, it would serve for the job at hand.

“Not many have made it this far,” he rushes as he checks the weapon over. It’s loaded still. “they’re pushing around the sides, trying to get to the water.” He moves to the edge of cover as he finishes his sentence, bracing himself to peek.

“We’re cut off then… Even more so than I thought we were,” the older man realizes as he places the saber at his belt, then he did the same thing Jon did.

“And a long way from home,” he nods. Then he presses the rifle to his shoulder and peeks to the side of a rock down into the dip below them. Stars of red glisten within the canvas of dull earthy tones in front of him, he spots one who approached far to his right and fires.

The man drops in a second, and Jon returns to the safety of cover and reloads his rifle, briefly thinking about who that man was, who he could have been.

His head shakes and he tries to get the thoughts from his mind. It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters but survival, holding the position so more people can get to the boats.

There’s a chorus of shots then, directly on their vantage position, a volley of messy musket fire from below, inaccurate and vicious.

Someone near groans and falls. Jon recognise the cries and connects them instantly with the memory of a face. Crouching and dippin along the cover and to the young man who huddles with a mess of blood along his shoulder.

“It bad?” He asks as he pulls him up to a crouch, He looks the wound over but can see little but the weeping blood that oozes slowly from it. It doesn’t look like a death blow to him, but it would surely hurt like hell and take some time to heal.

“I’ll be fine,” Grenn groans and grits his teeth, he is fine with the movement to his feet again, but he tries to reload his rifle and there’s another cry and it falls to the leafy floor with a thud.

Benjen Snow is with them both then. Grenn tries to raise himself to get his rifle but Jon watches as the older man pulls him down to the floor again, roughly, just as he had Jon. He rushes to give the wounds a glance before pushing him out of the position and down towards the coast, towards the boats.

“You’re no good to us if you can’t shoot. Get to the boats and get yourself seen to.” Then without hesitation, he pushes his back up against a fallen log and is ready to fire again.

Grenn resists and looks like he‘s going to disagree, he bristles angrily and Benjen gives him a look. That look that they all know.

The militiaman puts his hands against his own shoulder and slinks groggily up and along the trees to the north.

Jon moves up and covers his movement for a few minutes with vague blasts in the general direction of the lobsters. Benjen does likewise, but his shots are as accurate as they are deadly, straight into the chests of some sergeants who drop straight to the floor.

Jon breaths as he reloads, he can taste the smoke on the air, the action of his hands is so imprinted onto his mind that he doesn’t even have to think.

There’s another chorus of shots then. Chips of stone and ground scatter some of the leaves around him and Benjen. Obviously, the last shot angered them.

“Shooting officers?” He wondered aloud, his breathing ragged under the exertion of his quick movements.

“Only the sergeants.” Benjen nods as he gets ready to shoot again, he’s much quicker at this than his nephew is, that was to be expected. The younger man struggles, lost in the reason for his actions before his uncle expands. “We need some confusion, but I’m still saving some of the higher-ups to surrender to.”

He laughs at the logic of it, only half-forced. His own gun was ready again then, he picks up Grenn’s and begins loading that too, knowing that it could be useful soon. “That’s what it’s going to be?” He asks, with worry on my face at the thought of the Prison ships, of deportation or torture, everything he’d struggled to read in the pamphlets passed around camp.

 _We in the scouting parties haven’t earned our surrender yet. We’ve not even seen the battle,_ He thought, a bitter recollection to how things had unfolded and how so few had gotten cut off with a mass of troops to the south.

He holds both guns in his arms and can hear Benjen fire again. Tapping the man’s leg he exchanges his empty rifle for one of his own.

“Afraid so,” Benjen finally speaks as he corners some cover and fires down below. There’s a distant cry and some more fire upon them both. “There’s no holding back this tide.”

Jon loads the rifle again, then stacks it against the sloped earth, shouldering his own. He begins to wish that he had asked Grenn to leave his cartridge pouch with them, they had so few left after several more minutes. His bruised shoulder moves against a large rock, the bottom of which is burrowed beneath the ridge, somewhere he can’t see. Then he rolls slightly and spots a crowd pushing along their side. He watches and fires, dipping back into cover without seeing the results of any of his actions, before any reprisal could come.

“When’re we gonna surrender then?” He almost has to shout over the sound of more and increasing fire in his direction.

Benjen had moved. He was crouched now, over the corpse of the man whose equipment Jon had looted, tearing half of the less than pristine white off of some of his clothing. “We’re not,” Uncle Benjen spoke into the body below him, not looking up.

Jon looked to him, then to the dead man. Then he looked to the men around him who for the most part had either vanished or fallen. Few remained, scattered and haggard along the ridge-top.  He tries to speak, but little comes out. “But you said…”

“We’re not,” Benjen interrupts, repeating himself. Then he looks up finally with the white rag in his hands. “You’re going to the boats.”

There was a knife in Jon's stomach then and he replies instantly. “I’m not leaving you,” he stresses.

He shook his head and smiled. “Sure you are. You’re gonna move on to fight another day while the old and the wounded surrender.”

He sits down on a mound of dirt before the ridge and puts his rifle over his knees as he watches the only family he has left. The older man ties the rag to a dry branch and supports himself upwards. That’s when he see it, a splatter of blood across his arm. “No. I’ll stay, you’re hurt.”

He winces as he stands again, moving to the edge of their position, where a few men cower in pain and in fear. He places a hand on one of their shoulders, the youngest one, but still looks to Jon. “It’s a scratch.”

He moves towards him, but he pushes his hand against his chest when he's near enough. It hurts him to do so and he breaths against the pain.

“Go, Jon.” He tells him with a shove. He looks down to the ground for a moment with a look of realization on his face before he smiles and speaks again, saying the words slowly and with purpose.

“Just. Go.” With that, he untangles the saber from his belt and pushes it to him.

There’s a nod there and both of them can hear another storm of gunfire, closer than before. The sound of cannons and mortars too in the not so distant forest.

He slings the rifle behind his back and the saber at his side. Then he forces himself forwards to draw Benjen into his arms. He creases and winces and his nephew looks at him a final time to see his face, he smiles and the boy tries to smile back, praying that there are no Hessians or Highlanders below. Then he dips to the men around him, raising the white rag aloft above the ridge line. Groggily.

 

* * *

 

 

He's running, nothing but wind in the trees for the past few minutes.

The shots still echo behind him, closer and closer. The thought of that is sickening to him at the deepest level. He puts thoughts of Benjen and the men with him to the back of his mind as he sprints into a clearing through a break in the forest. The saber rattling against him as he does so.

There are groups of men, several of them clamoring on the waterside for what little boats remain. There were over 200 in the main party once, now less than half of that remained.

The rumble of cannon shot is closer and closer. With every sound, the men flinch and shudder, the only sudden and brief breaks from the commotion.

Jon skirts the edge of the crowds and scans them for familiar faces. On his left friendly riflemen watch over their position from a large overlooking cliff face that erupts from the earth like a fist.

With time he finds Grenn. Slumped against a rock on the shore, his legs almost fully submerged in the water that laps coolly against him. Some of the immediate vicinity, the surf about him was red and stained.

He rushes over to him and look at his wound. He groans almost drunkenly as Jon's hands move along his shoulder which was very much the same and his eyes wander deliriously around the place.

There’s a new shot.  To the side, below the ribs, a foam of darkness had built there in the cloth of his uniform.

“A surgeon?!” Jon shouts into the mob to no avail. “Is there a surgeon on the beach?!” Again, no response from the thrashing crowd.

Hands move manically over him and Jon takes the kerchief from around his neck to try to push into his side and stop the bleeding. It does nothing but soak the fabric, soak his hands in a red so black it’s almost like ink. “Everything’s going to be fine Grenn, we’ll get you a surgeon.”

He shouted again into the crowd, but men were busy climbing into newly arrived boats, hordes of people rushed from the treeline to the wooden vessels and some were moving off in the chaos at only half the capacity.

He shudders and brace as splashes of cool water comes against them and tries to keep Grenn above the rising tide.

Seawater drenches him, splashing in a sting against his face and in his eyes. He look to the crowd which was little but a blur and could see a man stop suddenly and run towards them.

“Jon,” a familiar voice speaks as he comes alongside them. It’s Pyp. “Oh god. We need to get him out. We need to get him…”

Crash. An echo of gunfire rings out and Jon scrubs at his face to try to unblur his eyes, only to see figures on the cliff side crouching with smoky weapons as they take cover and reload.

_They’re here._

“To the boat,” he tells Pyp. “We need to get him across the water.”

Hands struggle as they press them against the thick tar of liquid being released from Grenn’s body, as they lift underneath his arm. Pypar joins Jon and they manage to drag him roughly to a solitary boat along the water’s edge which had all but cast off.

“Help us,” They shout to the men on the boat. Half of them look blindly and ignorantly at the beached men, but a small few others rush to drag Grenn onboard, Jon and Pyp following.

They lay Grenn across a beam in the center and Jon continues to push along the wound, Pypar doing likewise.

The boat creaks and shudders and the stones beneath them crack and shuffle with the movement as they take to the water proper. Jon looks back into the beach and see the small remaining crowds swarm onto what they can, the blues and pales and greys of their patchwork militia uniforms creating a strange beast which grabbed and pulled on what little it could get a hold of.

A few moments go by and there’s another clatter of shots that ring out, a pink mist forming around the shambling horde on the beach. The look of smoke along with stained drops of clear red was visible amongst the trees.

“There’s space, Snow.” He can hear Pyp whisper as he curls against Grenn beneath them. “There was so much space.”

He watches with the sting of saltwater and tears in his eyes as the crowd was cut down with wave after wave of fire. Few men tried to swim out to the boats, evidence of which was now floating far behind them in the water.

Splashes made the water jump near the boats, another wooden vessel near them combusted with the cries of a dozen men. Jon turned as they realized the direction, small ships from the east with the wind at their back, cutting through the waves like swords armed with swivel cannon and musket.

Somebody grabs his wrist, tightly, and he looks down to Grenn, his eyes fading and his voice low he has grabs and whispers something neither man can hear.

Jon moves his head over towards his mouth and there’s a cough and a faint, struggled rattle that he recognizes instantly. He join him. Then Pyp, then a few others on the boat in a sad refrain, the words of which were deep but choked as the muskets and cannons fired all around them:

 _"-- Then join hand in hand brave Americans all,_  
_By uniting we stand, by dividing we fall;_  
_In so righteous a cause let us hope to succeed,_  
_For Heaven approves of each generous deed…"_

Suddenly there is a crash, louder than anything he has ever heard before, followed with the screams of grown men instantly cut short as the world plunges into darkness.

 

* * *

 

  
Sansa Stark watches the local militia drill in the meadow, their boots trample the grass and the wildflowers within and she sighs sadly at the sight.

The gleam and color of their uniforms and the regalia she had once been amazed by now unsettled her, vague words of actions in far-off places by strange men are about the town and occupied Sansa’s ears at the sewing circles she attended, filling her stomach with dread at the losses on either side.

Words were everything in Long Island right now, word of battle, of shipments, of little local intrigues. The place is alight with rumors and gossip and half-truths about almost everything, very little real news had flooded so far east since things had started.

She stands by the road into town and feels the branches of the old trees droop and sway gently against her as she worries whether Robb would be okay, where he had been placed and whoever he was with. Her hands grip the reed bag she carries strongly, so much so that the skin reddens.

She nestles the basket and feels it shift slightly underneath the weight of the contents. The baskets she makes never had seemed to her as strong as those her mother once weaved, and the thought of that makes her brow furrow.

Listing in her head the things she still had left to do today, she chastised herself for the moment’s idleness and continued quietly along.

She travels for a few minutes until she’s between the thickness of the hedges and much further home.

The slow clattering of hooves moves along the way with the rickety movement of wheels, Sansa hears them distinctly and recognizes the travelers almost instantly, much sooner than they manage to turn a corner and come from the side road and a messy tangle of bushes.

A small old horse pops through first. A mess of grey hair clings to its head as it chugs slowly into the street behind her.

It’s followed by a cart, dark and varnished with a tarp covering the little produce that she knew sits within the back. In the front and with the reigns of the horse in his hands is a man, as old and as disheveled looking as the horse he uses.

“Is Beth not with you, Mr. Cassel?” Sansa says softly as they finish the corner. The softness of her voice makes little difference, the man jumps nevertheless, in an exaggerated and comical way that had the young woman laugh and think it was mostly for her benefit.

“You ought not sneak up on an old man like that, Sansa,” he laughs deeply as he brings his cart to a stop, a short one which gives her just enough time to step along the rungs and set herself into the seat alongside him. “You’re liable to make me drop of shock.”

“I’m sure you’ll live,” she teased. “long enough to hear the price of cabbage this week at least. That would perhaps be enough to do it.”

“Well with everything how it is, I don’t expect those things to get better.” He replies in a lament that brings Sansa back to her largest worry.

“Have you heard anything on your nephew? Or of the war itself?” She asks, hoping for some inkling from a man she knew would tell her nothing unless he knew it to be true.

He gives her a wary look, then a sad one. He strokes his chin and then his thick sideburns before responding. “Little good news for anyone I’m afraid. Washington’s retreating north from what I hear. The rebels held onto houses and ridges and then New York itself for as long as they could to cover it, inflicting a fair bit of damage.”

Sansa grimaces at the words and steadies herself before she continues: “What does that mean happens now?”

“Well,” he reasons as they skim along the path, “it depends on whether Howe follows. Your guess is as good as mine on that one.”

She allows herself to stew on that, the details of military strategy being as foreign to her as the mysteries of the interior. They talk quietly for the rest of the journey up to Winterfell hall.

 

* * *

 

He’s being searched once more by a militiaman. That is the third time it’s happened since his arrival in the city, more specifically since entering the offices of the units in control of the city.

Things are jumpy in Philadelphia, have been ever since the frigates arrived and started to skulk along the mouth of the Delaware several months earlier.

Not that he’d know about that, he’d only heard it from his innkeeper as he arrived in the city at morning.

They didn’t know much else yet. The news of battle would likely trickle in soon and the city would be in a panic at some point. Congress would likely flee if they heard enough to worry them, Robb thought. It was his job to inform the garrison, after all, if that was what you could call the Light Horse of the City of Philadelphia, they would inevitably inform congress themselves.

Why he couldn’t do that, Robb wasn’t exactly sure, this job seemed lowly for a lieutenant. But he would do what was commanded of him despite his thoughts, that was what he promised with his oath.

The militiaman finishes the frisking and hands the man back his hat, then he points to the chair with pale fingers and tells him to wait.

Robb hardens his jaw with frustration but does as he was asked. The hat is folded underneath his arm and not returned to his auburn head as he sits down into the ornately carved chair across the room.

Some time goes by and the door on the opposite side of the room opens, three men walk outside. One, a ranking officer, pats another on the back as they all laugh together. Then they all shake hands heartily and the two other officers move across the office and out.

The man is big, bigger than almost any man Robb had seen. Not the gangly and twig-like big like some men get, but big like a house, or a bear.

Robb is to his feet already, saluting and stood still as the grave.

The man looks at Robb and smiles through a grey beard.

“What are you waiting for, boy? Michaelmas? These messages aren’t going to deliver themselves.”

Then the man walks back into the room without another look. Robb moves his feet and shuffles past the militiaman who continues to stand dutifully at his post.

He’s in the room proper when the older man corners a desk and sits down not so far from a large fire.

“Shut the door behind you.” The man orders, Robb obeys with little hesitation, then moves his feet rhythmically to the desk. The messenger brings his documents from his satchel and holds them out sealed and pristine in his hand.

The older man smiles and takes them. He studies Robb’s face first before he places the two letters on his desk. “I take it by your look that we haven’t held the line in New York?”

Robb shakes his head.

“No, sir. A strategic retreat.”

“Be at ease, boy,” he responds with a shake of his hand.  “Why don’t you sit down and tell me your name?”

Robb hesitates. Then he pulls a chair from nearby to the desk and sits down, straight and upright, there’s no sign that this is relaxing for him, his fingers itch to be back in the fight.

“Robb Stark.” He answers as the officer opens one of the letters with the flick of a decorative letter knife.

His inquisitor looks up blank-faced for a moment before opening his letter. “Sir,” Robb adds. Then the smile is there again, wider than before. It makes him feel easier.

The man moved his lips as he read, far too quickly for Robb to read them and devise what the message truly read. Though he guessed the contents, orders, and movements to relay to the city forces and information to tell Congress.

With a toss of the paper, it falls into the nearby fire. Robb watches as the crumpled piece glowed and then slowly vanished into ash as the man unwrapped his other message.

He gets out a book then, and another piece of paper. The man peers from letter to book and then scribbles with a quill on the note in front of him

 _A cipher,_ Robb thought, he had learned something about them during his training. The note would have in it keywords or numbers which corresponded to pre-agreed upon words, those words being stored in code books.

He watches the man scratch words onto the paper but doesn’t read them, that was none of his business. He only needed to deliver the message then wait for further orders.

The air is pungent with burning wood and small logs crackle and pop in the heat.

Robb feels sweat on the back of his neck, collecting limply in his neckerchief. The man continues his scrawling for a short while until he nods and gets up, then throws both his own writing and the original piece to the fire.

He moves the pieces around with a poker and Robb watches him. Without turning he speaks: “I suppose you’re waiting for your orders?”

“Sir.” He nods.

He tosses the instrument back into its metal holder and skims the side of the toom with his hands behind his back. “Do you enjoy the work you do, Robb?” His voice is almost distant as he paces.

Robb stops and thinks things over before answering. He has no problems with the work he does, has no problem doing the things his commanders ask of him. There’s a face conjured to his mind.

“I do my duty, sir.” He speaks with his eyes in front.

“And where,” The man replies, his voice now behind the young officer. “do you think your duty lies?”

It seems obvious to him, he wonders what the purpose of these questions are. “With the rest of the men, on the battlefields and in the camps.”

The man moves around him until he’s in Robb’s vision again. “Hmmm…” he hums as he turns to his desk. He strokes his beard and looks across the edge of it, giving the younger man a questioning glance. “And what if I told you that you could do more damage to the enemy, more help to your comrades, right here in Philadelphia?” He’s back up on his feet again and moving over to his chair. His hands move slowly along the edges of the chair’s arms and he leans forward, reaching his hands along his desk to grab at a bottle and a glass, awaiting an answer as he pours.

Robb’s eyebrows raise slightly, and he adjusts in his seat. “I’m not sure what you’re saying to me, sir.”

He finishes pouring, the drink is sweet looking and red. He slowly and deliberately pushes the glass across the table.

There’s a smile and he nods as Robb takes the drink in hand. “I’m offering you a job, Lieutenant Stark.”

 

* * *

 

It’s a short ride up the path and then through a nestle of large oak trees under which blackberry bushes had gathered. Sansa smiles as a memory comes to her. Robb and Bran chasing the rest of the children with vividly red faces, how mother had been furious that their white church clothes were ruined, and Father had laughed with his eyes as she did so. _How things used to be_.

Beyond the opening is the large lawn which overgrows and buzzes wild with the soft symphony of a hundred insects.

The house stands at the back of the lawn where it has stood since before her Father was born, bright and painted the wood glistened in the afternoon light and welcomes her home.

The cart pulls up between the house and the back where the Barn stands solitary and a small distance away.

Sansa waits for the man to step from the cart and come around it before she accepts his large, thick hands and his help to the ground with a thank.

“I hope Jory writes to you soon, Mr. Cassel.” She tells him as she reaches into her basket for a small parcel of goods she had prepared for him and his daughter.

“You’re a good girl, Sansa.” He responds with a grin and watches her move into the house.

She can hear the echoing thwacks of wood against wood as she makes her way across the hallway and into the largeness of the dining room. Things are looking bare and unadorned, as they had been since her mother died.

Rickon is there at the end of a large oak table with a branch almost larger than himself in both his hands, swinging it wildly towards her Father.

They both laugh as the older man blocks the blows with refined flourishes and twists of his walking cane. In his other hand, a small wooden goblet went to his lips and he sipped unfrustrated by either of their actions.

They hear Sansa announce her presence with a forced cough and they both stop and give her awkward, guilty stares.

Rickon takes the small advantage and slays the giant while his guard is down. Delivering a well-placed strike to the arm that makes the goblet fly and clatter with a splash on the opposite side of the table.

“Aaaaahhh!” The boy screams as he ducks his father’s grasp and runs straight into Sansa’s arms. She struggles to place her basket and collects him with a wide grin that mirrors his own.

“Looks like someone’s had an entertaining afternoon,” she announces to them both as she carries Rickon to the table and back to her father.

His grey eyes lighten as he brushes the moisture from his close-cropped beard and straightens his black shirt with his hands. “I am afraid I have excited him somewhat.” He admits.

His daughter sits nearby and places Rickon on her knee. She could feel the increased weight of him under her arms and her leg and noted mentally how quickly he was growing up. A small part of her willed him to stop.

Her fingers dance along his nose until she presses it gently. He bats her hands away playfully as she does so.

There’s a knock on the doorframe then, a gentle rapping which makes the three of them turn. Cassel is stood rubbing his hands together after taking off some gloves, he gives Sir Ned Stark a nod and Sansa knows what it means right away.

She rolls her eyed, partly with reluctance, partly with disinterest as she places Rickon on the floor. She wonders whether Robb would have been allowed to hear the conversation if he hadn’t left.

 “Why don’t we go play hide and seek while father and Mr. Cassel talk?” She asks as she kneels to Rickon. Before there is any response he has already run down the hallway and out of the house.

She collects her basket and takes it into the kitchen for later. She can hear old Nan snore like a dog in her rocking chair and wonders why it was father had the old nanny around when she never seemed to watch Rickon, perhaps she was just as much a part of the family as the rest of them.

With her wrist covering her eyes loosely she counts on the doorstep for a reasonable amount of time before setting off on the hunt.

The outhouse door was open, so she was thankful he wasn’t inside of that again.

Nor could she see a trail in the grass about the front of the house where he could have run through.

Her finger went to her lips and she surveyed and thought until she spotted him. Or at least his small pink fingers gripping the edge of Mr. Cassel’s cart.

She slunk and stalked towards her prey who moved roughly underneath the tarp of the cart. She pulled the thing back quickly and revealed him only for him to jump at her again. His body shaking with excitement as she wrapped his arms around her.

“Again,” he spoke, surprisingly clearly.

She nods, “The last one. Then I’ve got to make supper.”

She helps him to the ground and he puts his small hands over his eyes as he chants nonsense, counting being far beyond him.

Sansa thinks and looks around herself. Then she moves slowly with creeping footsteps to the large family barn, the small door of which had been opened.

It was dark on the inside with the larger doors on the opposite ends closed. Sansa moved by the family horse, Ben, which neighed and trotted in a gentle excitement in the wider space that belonged to it. She let her hand feel gently along its side as she passed its pen and it pushed into the softly into the warmth of her touch.

The section next she comes to seems all too sharp and dangerous to hide in. Scythes and hoes stand with little prevention all around, Sansa closes the section off with a swinging gate and latches that gate to prevent Rickon ever running in.

Satisfied that disaster is averted she remembers her reason for entry and turns a corner quickly into an old pen. It’s dark but for a few slivers of light shining down through gaps in the wooden slats of the barn. She pats her long work dress down and crouches near where a thick pile of hay sits messily on the ground.

The hay moves with a groan as she does so.

Sansa screams.


	2. Chapter 2

The tailor looks at him in disgust. He’s unused to up jumped country bumpkins like this in his shop.

In times like these however, paying customers are hard to come by and one does not have the luxury to pick and choose one’s clients.

Robb’s money, or rather the money which Major Mormont had provided him, is as good as anyone else’s he supposes. He hadn’t received an official assignment, role or list of duties yet, but apparently a whole formal wardrobe and lodgings almost as fine as Winterfell was in its prime would be a necessary part to the activities Mormont wants him to engage in.

The tailor prods and pokes him in the back and shoulders, takes measurements along key locations and asks him questions on cuts and cloths that Robb doesn’t quite understand. He hums along impatiently to the quiz, hoping his answers are adequate and waits for the experience to be over.

Once shooed into the autumnal light of the city Robb takes his receipts and forms detailing collection and fitting dates and shoves them roughly into his jacket pocket. He hears the door lock behind him as he stands to watch the street for a moment.

Some strangers in finery look at his dull browns and greys rather smugly as they pass him. He feels naked as a new-born without the familiar uniform he was told he was not to wear about town anymore.

Congress is in session as he passes. It almost always is as far as he’s seen. It was when Robb was given the honor of informing them of the retreats from New York and Long Island, it was as he passed back to Mormont for orders. That honor had come at a cost however, Robb’s time. For he had given Mormont the rest of the week to talk him into the role he wants him to fill. It has felt like the longest few days of his life so far.

He’s back at Mormont’s lodgings before night, the guards on the door have learned his face by sight within the last couple of days and know to let him in without a moments’ delay, they do so with silent glances to him and to each other that make Robb angry, he feels like they know more than the officer is willing to disclose to him. This far from the lines he feels like he knows little to nothing.

He walks in without announcement to find Mormont at the desk, scribbling away with the afternoon light pouring in through his window.

The man pauses and resists the urge to salute in front of his commander, who looks up to him awaiting an answer.

“I’ve done as you’ve asked.” He tells him, moodily.

The older man nods understandingly and motions for Robb to sit at the desk. Something that Robb doesn’t wish to do. He doesn’t want to stay. He wants to leave for the front, for the fight.

As if sensing this, the man closes the book on his desk and folds some notes scattered around before dedicating all of his attention on to Robb whose fists are clenching in a sullen defiance.

“When you said you had a job for me, Sir,” There’s a stressed anger at the final word, a word he was informed not to use, a vicious indicator to his overall feelings. “I thought it would be something of use to the war. Not having me as prim and groomed as some dandy or milksop.”

Mormont’s wrists are freed from their buttoned confines by thick and haired hands. He folds them up as Robb finishes his words, then he waits a little while longer. It reminds Robb of how his father would deal with Rickon after a tantrum.

Mormont’s now uncovered hands point towards the desk chair, and Robb sits down, defeated with little more than a stare.

As soon as his legs touch the furniture the other man speaks, calmly and collected, with little warmth and a great deal of cold reality.

“I am looking for men, Lieutenant, who can serve as my eyes and ears in the city. Men who are capable of working alone, in the places where uniformed men cannot be seen, without orders and only their instinct to guide them. I think you know the kind of work I mean...”  There’s a moment as the word that is not said is allowed to echo in the room. Robb doesn’t reply instantly but waits intentionally to allow his words to be more pointed.

“My place is on the field, Sir.” He tells him. “I would be no use to you as a spy.”

“Not yet perhaps.” He agrees as he stands, Robb shakes his head as he sees he is going to continue. His movements go around the desk and he sits down, close to Robb, uncomfortably and intimately so, as if to stress the point he is making and ensuring its absolute clarity. “But Washington's army is almost gone. Men are deserting in the hundreds, they're fed up with death and defeat.”

Robb’s face shifts slightly with half-remembered grumblings in the lines and in the camps.

“If we're going to win this war and win the peace we need after it, we can't afford to fight conventionally. It will be men like the one I will have you become that will win us this war. Everything I have asked you to do is only a small but necessary step towards that aim.” With the last of this speech, he places his hands across his own lap and straightens up.

There’s some movement outside. Robb can hear the patrols move and sing in the street through the thick glass of the window and a question is thrust into his mind.

“Why me?” he asks as the other man ruffles through pockets. “There are probably dozens of men in this city who’d do the job without qualms, why are you so set on me?”

Mormont retrieves a pipe which he crams with tobacco and lights with the help of a nearby candle. “Why not you?” he puffs as the stuffing burns in a glow as orange as the coming sunset. “You’re a bright lad, can read and write enough, you come well recommended by your officers who say you don’t fear the enemy or the field.”

Robb feels an urge to speak at that. There’s a rush of images that come to his mind. Those he had seen in his regiment, not on the field, but in the trees and the back paths of Long Island after the Reds had come in from nowhere like they knew his exact position. “I don’t fear the enemy _on_ the field,” he finally corrects. “You’d have to be a fool not to fear them elsewhere.”

“I do not fear the enemy on the field either, Robb.” Mormont agrees before he points the length of his pipe in Robb’s direction: “I fear the enemy that sits within my home, and within my heart.  Whether it destroys us, or whether we use it to destroy them… this war will be decided by intelligence, intelligence that will save the lives of many hundreds of good men. The British and the Tories have a whole empire to draw from, we cannot win this war conventionally.”

Robb thinks the words over before he responds. There’s a brief pause that is silent bar the faintness of sucking through the filtered reeds of the pipe.

“There seems something so…” he struggles to find words and shakes his head as he imagines what his father would think, what he was already thinking. He imagines his face on the day he left, and the lonely and hidden hurt it exhibited. “…grubby about it all.”

“Grubby when looking at the possibility of some deeds perhaps, but not in the grand scheme with the reason and motivation closed behind that. You’d be doing something that if you succeed, would be so grand for our side that they’ll worship you for centuries as a hero.”

 _A hero,_ Robb thinks. That wasn’t what they called him when he left, that didn’t bother him though, he had skin thick enough for those particular blows. He doesn’t care what they call him. He cares about the cause.

As the larger man stares and watches, Robb finally meets his gaze and nods. Mormont smiles with his eyes and takes the pipe from his mouth with a wooden clatter against his teeth.

“I don’t suppose you fancy a dance?” he asks as he raises himself from the desk.

 

* * *

 

A colonial falls abruptly in the gunfire from the sides. Collapsing onto himself the running man behind him is launched from his feet and onto the floor with a sickening crunch. A second man tries to veer away from it in the madness of the ambush, but he goes down just as badly as the first man had...

The musket fire ends and the small and very wet group is all but destroyed, the only sound now the groans of dying men.

Theon watches as they move, he shivers in a crevice between two trees and begs god that they haven’t seen him in his hiding spot yet.

From some other trees a man raises his arm in a signal, and with that, a dozen other men in patchwork uniforms emerge out and into the open. _Militiamen? Kingsmen? Hessians?_ Theon wonders to himself in fear.

The officer watches his handiwork with a smile and speaks to himself loudly. Like he is the only one in the whole colony.

“Well, I'll be damned... He was right.”

His men rush across the mess of bodies along the trail and do what Theon knows they do best. Loot and rob. Take what equipment they can, before another group can come, before another member of the unit can scavenge it. Theon had heard too many stories to not know who he was dealing with already, to not know the instincts that this specific commander had built into them, making them both the renowned and hungry dogs that they are.

The officer walks across the field like he is taking an afternoon stroll, his eyes studying his men, the men on the floor begging for quarter but receiving nothing but cold steel in reply.

That makes Theon angry. Angry and stupid.

He reaches into his belt and withdraws his pistol, aware that it could be the last thing he does. With a twist of cartridge paper, he stuffs a ball into the barrel and with shaking hands, half-cocks the hammer. Pouring the powder into the pan, he closes the frizzen and waits.

Another man is put out of his misery before he can make any more noise and Theon sees the splash of warm blood against the officer’s face as it happens.

He lets it fall until he wipes at it roughly with his fingers, examining the remnants that remained thickly on them with glittering eyes and a wide grin. He turns his back then and continues inspecting the line.

 _It’s now or never,_ Theon decides.

He points the gun neatly and accurately at his target. He knows he can do it, he has made tougher shots than this before and at greater range.

With a steadying breath, the trigger goes and the hammer CLAPS loudly in the now silence of the woods. But no blast comes.

The officer turns at the noise, peering into the side of the trail where Theon was now sprinting, wanting to be anywhere but here.

 

* * *

 

There’s a scream. A woman’s. The kind he hasn’t heard since Catelyn had left them. This one wasn’t sorrowful however, but fearful. Fearful and pitched.

Cassel gives him a short, hard look and Ned raises to his feet with a speed he knew would hurt him later.

The walking stick is tight in his hand and the saber above the mantelpiece is within his grasp in a little more than a moment. He doesn’t have time to feel the old weight of it. To let his feet steady on the wooden floor. He is moving as steadily and as quickly as his feet will take him despite the hard ache, despite the protestations of Cassel who follows behind.

Eddard and Cassel are through the door before they hear the barn door slam with the friction of wood against wood. As Ned turns past his friend’s cart he hears him grab his own weapon from a place in the back.

Sansa is stood with her back against the door, her face frantic as she shivered against it in shock.

“Sansa!” Ned shouts roughly. He hasn’t done it in so long, but the authoritativeness is still there. “What’s going on?”

With the knowledge her father is here, her face shifts as she struggles to regain composure. She moves from the door with a false steeliness beyond her years and beyond her ability, and her father sees nothing but his little girl and the slivers of dread beneath the surface.

He closes the distance and she wraps her arms around him. He feels the heat of her as she shakes. “There’s someone… someone is dead in our barn.” She almost whispers. Her face flickers and she gives her father a begging look. “Where is Rickon?”

Eyes search the area until they lock on a young boy, chasing birds, oblivious to the mood of the adults around him.

“Take him and Nan upstairs and don’t come down until me or Mr. Cassel say that it is safe.” Her father almost growls, it is nothing like she has seen him before.

“But--” She tries to argue before she’s cut off instantly.

“Go, Sansa.”

Ned moves against the door himself and waits until he can see the color of Sansa’s dress disappear into the house. Then he pushes himself against the door to peer inside.

The horse neighs in the darkness, rearing and bucking in its large pen, startled by something. Ned sees nothing else.

Cassel is with him now, hatchet in hand. Were it not for their mismatched weapons and the lack of equipment and comrades long fallen it would almost remind him of certain days in his prime.

Cassel swings the door open and bursts through the barn with the ax like a man possessed. All until he stops. Suddenly and lonely in the darkness before the last stall.

Ned hurdles along and he can smell him before he sees him.

A militiaman. But not in the King’s colors. Damp and covered in sweat, and dirt, and blood, he tosses gently and feverishly beneath the hay.

Sir Ned looks to his friend in silence and he knows what they should be doing instantly. They should be sending out to the local garrison for an officer, they should be preparing a report to send to the militia representative to come and detain the man. He should be securing his family by doing his civic duty.

But he isn’t.

He looks at the twisted and pained face of the man in front of him… the boy in front of him, really. Thick, dark ringlets cling against the sweat and mud of his face and Ned fights the urge to push them up and out as he did when his own sons had a fever.

Ned steps forwards and presses an arm against the open door as he steadies himself into a crouch against it. He can sense Rodrick already knows what he’s thinking.

“Ned,” his friend speaks in a warning. “They know Jory is gone to the war, and not on the side of the redcoats. If I have anything to do with this they’ll be doing more than billeting on my property.” He sighs in frustration as Ned leans forward and looks the half-corpse over. “They’ll know soon enough that Robb hasn’t really gone to the college in Philadelphia. We need to think carefully about what we’re going to do next, we need to think about our children…”

Ned sees little but a face. One that he looked in with guilt and sadness and pride before it left him, likely not to be seen again.

“We’re not sitting and watching while someone else’s boy dies within our reach. We should hope that others would do the same for our own kin.”

 

* * *

 

“How are you settling into your new role?” The dwarf asks. His thick fingers holding a fine-looking glass in hand.

“Oh, fine...” his brother mumbles. “though I still have to answer to Baelish and then to Howe.” 

Tyrion nods, setting his empty glass on the desk before filling his own and Jaime’s again. Jaime eyes the sherry but shakes his head, he knows that he shouldn’t, knows that he still had duty today, but the temptation of the sweet black-market finery was simply too much to ignore.

“You’re a cruel man, Tyrion.” He admonishes the smaller man opposite him with a sly looking smile before he tastes the forbidden drink again. He could rarely say no, which was part of the reason why he was sent here and away from England. He looks into his glass and the red reminds him of warm lips that he misses as fiercely as he had once kissed, even after so many years.

“Respect a man for his strength and skill, Jaime.  But learn to know him by his weakness.”

Jaime sighs. “Do you always need to speak in witty sayings and condemnations, or is it something you’ve inherited from our father?”

Tyrion finishes his drink with a final gulp and pats down his brown jacket, tailored neatly and fashionably by the greatest boy’s tailor in the colonies. “I’m afraid the apple rarely falls far from the tree. Though of course, we have both fallen so very far since then.”

“Hmm…” Jaime hums back. He thinks his brother knows exactly what he means even though the words aren’t spoken.

_Some more willingly than others._

The doors to the private room open and Jaime nods at his ensign who dutifully salutes in the presence of his major.

“Young Master Stark,” Tyrion says warmly, “To what do we owe the pleasure?”

Ramsay Bolton enters before he can be announced, he does that often, Jaime had learned since he took on this role, not one to pay attention to customs and ceremony. A bayonet is still strapped to his waist despite the club’s rules about leaving weapons at the door.

“What news from the front?” Jaime asks, knowing that the report must be important enough for the young officer to be interrupting him in his private hours, to have traveled all the way from his positions in the lines.

“You’re winning.” Ramsay nods and gives them both a reptilian look before he tosses a thick folding of documents to Jaime’s table. “I’ll be in town for a day before I leave again.” Then he exits. As abruptly as he had entered.

Bran follows him nervously and presumably returns to his post at the door. Jaime takes the opportunity to finish his drink before tucking the papers into his uniform.

He gives his brother a questioning look and speaks. “Do you think it’s strange we’re winning when Washington has been using such savage tactics against us?”

“Thank God we employ our own savages.” Tyrion comments, both dryly and distantly.

 

* * *

 

Sansa patiently awaits her father’s command with fright. Fright, regret, and a hidden eagerness. It has been so long since he had told her to do anything, since he had been this way that she had almost forgotten how things were before she had begun to take things over. Before her Mother had gone, before Robb and Bran had gone, and before Arya had gone. They were all that was left now.

What she had seen in the barn had frightened her, no doubt, she struggles to let the image escape her mind and attacks herself mentally for how she had reacted. But she knows deep within herself that both Mr. Cassel and her father would deal with things. There’s a surety there which appeared suddenly like a memory.

Rickon lays gently across the bony knees and arms of Old Nan in her rocking chair. The excitement of the small amount of time that had passed having worn him out. She watches the rise and fall of his chest against the thin white of his shirt now stained with the mess of grass and flowers and smiled at the thought of him running.

She’s interrupted by the door opening slowly with a creak. Through it pokes the head of Mr. Cassel, she had half expected it to be her father, but remembered the difficulty he had getting up the stairs.

Cassel motions with his fingers for her to follow and she does so, pressing her dress down over herself as she stands and tucks her needlework into her chair.

“Don’t.” He tells her, and points towards her box. “We may have need of both needle and thread again soon.”

That confused her. But she collected some despite her reservations, bundling some into her work pockets she followed him down the wooden staircase and then into the back room.

Her father was standing. Crooked legged and lent against a spare table, on which a young man thrashed under his pinning. The bare skin of his chest looked red and hot to the touch.

He must have heard them enter because he turned to them with a tired look.

“Sansa,” He spoke, “This boy has a fever and a small wound that needs stitching shut to help its healing. Me and Rodrick have both cleaned him as best we can for now, but we need your help with the sewing. Without us both holding him down he can struggle too much against our efforts.”

Sansa nods, slowly. Her eyes study the man on the furniture, the lines of his body and the shine it has taken as it pulses and shivers despite the moderacy of the temperature. She approaches with needle and thread in hand and moves beside her father where there is a candle and strong alcohol.

Her father gently places her hands where he wants them, just to the man’s side before he gives her a look which instills her with confidence and surety.

Cassel moves to the other side of the table and presses down on the body; her father pours alcohol over the wound which runs thin and jagged. The man groans and bucks slightly and Ned pushes him down too as he pours some alcohol over the needle as well.

Sansa feels sick as she first embeds it into his skin. Had she known more she would have chosen something thinner. With every pierce and tug on thread the man beneath her moved and winced with unintelligible murmurs. Some time goes by and she finishes, wiping the blood and the sweat with boiled rags her father had prepared.

They all lifted him then, Sansa felt the strange hardness of his muscle and felt thoroughly scandalized. They placed him in her father’s bed downstairs and watched him as the men spoke.

“What a lucky boy. An inch to the side and he’d be gone.” Cassel said.

“He still needs to make it through the night. He needs all the help he can get” Her Father replied.

That night, as her father took watch over the man and Mr. Cassel left for home so as not to raise suspicion, Sansa took a moment to include in her prayers one for the stranger in her home.

                                                         


	3. Chapter 3

Even under the thinness of the cotton sheet he is as  hot as a loaf of bread straight from the oven.

Sansa had washed his face regularly with cloths as cool as she could make them, but he is still fairing little better. Within her father's bed he breaths shallowly from time to time, his chest shaking now and then as it rises and falls.

The skin of his face and of his bare neck glistens in a way that makes her anxious, she doesn’t know what to do. Whether she should try to warm him up, or cool him down, whether she should ride out and find her father and Mr Cassel in town or stay in the house as instructed.

Her fingers entwine nervously as she worries and watches his figure in the bed. She isn’t just worrying for him, but for her brothers too, the both of them, wherever they are.

It wouldn’t be a good way to go, Sansa had decided. Being burned from the inside by some unknown force. She hopes that won’t be the case with this man, but her father had warned that the stranger might not last until he returns from town with some supplies that may aid them. They were for her, he told her he would tell the vendor.

She questioned the wisdom of her father’s decision not to report the man to the militia, but when he had phrased it the way he had she felt there was little room to argue. If Robb or Bran were suffering in the same way, she hoped someone else would be doing their very best to aid them, to try and stop their suffering.

From the nightstand she grabs her needlework set and puts herself to work. It makes her feel useful to do something which she knows so well as opposed to something that foreign, and the letters and numbers she creates on her sampler will be a good learning tool for young Rickon.

The room is silent for some time but for the soft tug of thread and the occasional tsk of needle against hard thimble.

In time she becomes used to the uneven rhythm and the small noises which come from her charge. Eventually the man’s chest stills and then shakes again, and she finishes the letter before there is a sound. A sound that makes her look up.

A cough.

It is followed by a rough and aching groan as a muscled arm, glistened with sweat, skirts sleepily down until the sheet around his body fall and his fingers are near to the still healing wound by his side.

Sansa’s eyes widen, and she drops her work to the ground with a clatter against the hard wood. Her hands move instinctively to his arm and she can feel the deep heat of its hard bareness as she tries to pin it away from the neatness of her stitching. There’s some hazy resistance then and the lids of grey eyes shudder and then raise, shocked. The pupils within dart around quickly and there are sudden confused and shallow breaths.

“Please, sir. Stop. You will hurt yourself,” Sansa pleads as the eyes connect with the blue of her own. The slender fingers of the arm she grabs wrap around her wrist in a way that reminds her of a child. The hand pulls her, just barely, as his lips move. But there is no noise.

His face is pained, and he says something, something she can’t hear over a low cough.

She knows that she shouldn’t, that she should wait for her father, that this man could be anyone and there are so many risks to herself and others involved in this now. But she tucks a ringlet of copper hair behind her ear and dips her head towards him to listen closer. Then closer still until she can feel the heat of him, even this small distance away.

Lips move again followed by a voice that rattles weakly through puffed lips, still so faint, even this close.

“Water…”

She slips from his grasp and rushes to the side of the room spooning deeply at a pail, her hand cupping underneath the utensil to collect what drips from the curvature of the spoon.

As she brings the wood to his lips he drinks quickly from it, so quickly that the water creates little rivers that run thinly from the sides of his mouth and down to his chest. It’s a mess. Sansa tips her hands against his mouth to give him as many drops as she can, feeling the chapped lips brush roughly against her knuckles.

She can hear the friction of the front door as it opens down the hall, it is followed by a voice, her father announcing that he is home. She makes to rush for the doorway but a damp hand grabs gently at her wrist.

“No.” he the young man whispers. “Don’t leave me. Please.”

 

* * *

 

 

“The militiamen were exactly where you said they would be.” Bolton notes as he leans further back on his chair, watching the blonde officer as he takes a seat and ties his hair back more tightly. It is golden and well-kept, and he knows that makes this rougher man angry.

“Yes,” Jaime nods as he brings his hands to the table between them, brushing off some dust collected on its edge, “I read your report.”

It was only a half-lie, he had tried to read it at least before Bran had to decipher what remained. The hand-writing was rough and poor and coupled with Jaime’s own problem with letters it made the task insurmountable.

The look he receives back is appraising, the tone is mocking. “And how did you know that?  I doubt you ever stray from the city, or your mirror for that matter.” 

He doesn’t like what he says or how he says it, but he lets it slide. It wasn’t worth the trouble he knew it would bring him, and he knows the man will be far away again soon, in service of Jaime’s own aims. “You know, I can still hear the admiration through the insult,” he quips back.

“What military purpose was there in having my men hunting down a few colonials in the trees and not going directly for the heart of the enemy?”  A thin smile appears on his lips as he finishes and Jaime knows he’s talking about Washington or some other higher-up in the enemy camp, he resists the urge to tell him not to be stupid and that they didn’t need another martyr like Dr Warren for their enemies to rally behind. He grimaces and thinks for a second, recalling what a mess that whole campaign was.

“Who said I have to tell you the purpose, or whether there is one?” His words are spoken as soft and unthreatening as a kittens yawn, he makes them so purposefully.

But the man pushes again, sees how things lay, how far he can take this before Jaime reacts: “I assume there’s a reason that they keep you around other than for your good-looks and your _family_ connections.” 

He doesn’t take the bait. Only looks about the tavern for a moment, to his ensign, to the barman and then to the floor near his feet as he runs his tongue along the tips of his white teeth. His emerald eyes glitter in the dim light as he looks back to the younger man opposite him and leans in. “The same reason they keep you. You excel in your particular field of expertise.”

He takes the compliment and laughs with a pitched snigger. “And whatever would that be? Killing? Looting? Forced confessions?”

All could be right for Ramsay Bolton, but only the first of his examples applies to Jaime, he thinks. A memory haunts him for a moment and he can almost feel the weight of a pistol in his hand.

The things he listed aren’t what Jaime needs from Ramsay today.

“No,” he says softly as he moves his arm to support himself off of the table. “The hunt. And I have new prey lined up for you.”

The man’s icy eyes widen, and he smiles.

 

* * *

 

He feels like a mouse. A hundred hungry eyes watch as he moves through the large hall in his new clothes. Tasteful and muted, his dress coat fits tightly over his waist coat and his shirt. There is just a simple trim of Tory colours which looks small compared to some of the more garish displays in the crowd. Mormont had told him this was to be a neutral ball, but in Philadelphia these days the word neutral had a different meaning.

His chestnut hair shines within a dishevelled crop of medium curls that spin to cling to the air and to his newly shaved face. He has certainly been dressed and groomed to the part and he hates it. He hates the lack of mud beneath his fingernails and the lack of rifle in his hands. But he decided he would continue as promised, his word is one of the few things he isn’t willing to break.

The doorman announced him by his own name, it had seemed pointless attempting to change it, only those closest to him, those few trusted men Mormont had informed and those he had served with as an unattached officer in the north had any knowledge of him being a rebel. He had decided the original reason for his movement westward would suffice enough for the charade.

For the foreseeable he is nothing but Robb Stark, looking for enrolment at the college in the next term and biding his time and spending his family’s money until then. Not that the Starks had much money any more, Robb’s particular purse was filled sparingly with his new commander’s own coffers.

Those hosting the party hadn’t invited Robb personally, his ticket for entry had come at the price of an immodest bribe. He was assigned to the festivity to try and ingratiate himself within the heart of the city’s society. Where information was to be gained he was told he would be. Would it be in the chess or orchestral societies he would have to display a keen interest in them, were it in the local bird watching organisation he would invest in a telescope.

It’s all a charade, he tells himself. Like those games that he would play in his youth, the small and intimate performances his mother had once organised before her passing. It makes it all feel less real, less distasteful, less dangerous.

Once he fades into the crowds and moves by the sides of the room he feels the looks lift from him and the company move back to their activities. He sighs gently in relief as they do so and finds a spot from which to survey the room.

It’s a wide and long assembly room with thick pillars scattered strategically to hold up the higher than usual roof. A wooden bar stretches a corner of the room with casks of refreshments being dispensed sparingly, the whole thing has a rustic feel more than city, and a matter which gives Robb the indication that it was all put together very last minute.

Dancers move in their sets at the hall’s end. In their thick dresses, pretty and young debutants display the routines built into them with years of practice, small wigs and curled ringlets bob gently to the sides with the movement. His mind moves to Sansa and he thinks on how she would have loved it here, how she would have loved the dresses and the clothes and the hair. With that he is reminded of how much his other sister would detest all those things, and he smiles gently at the thought. Smiles until he is tapped lightly in the side.

With a turn he finds himself confronted by a small girl, not so much older than Rickon would now be. The girl’s hair is dark and patterned primly behind her ears in thin braids and then bunched about the sides and back. One small hand stays by her red cheek with hesitation as the other withdraws slowly from stretching to touch Robb.

She says something quietly, but Robb cannot hear her over the strings of a not so distant instrument. He hesitates, and then to clarify, he takes a knee and levels himself, making her blush grow a fraction fiercer.

He looks into the girl’s green eyes and waits patiently for her to speak again.

She looks back and to a small posse of young women and girls who have gathered to watch them both, some smiling and giggling behind fans and cupped hands. The girl turns back to him and with a flicker of resignation  and mumbles.

“You have a very pretty flower, sir.”

A memory forms in his mind and he can hear the chastisement his mother had once given him over some youthful teasing long forgotten, the half-sniggers can be heard faintly from the nearby gathering of girls.

He looks down at his lapel and takes the colours of the flower in, he can’t name it, but it’s in traditional Tory colours. The insistence on such things had been the only thing his tailor had seemed to like about him. Even if now he thought it overkill.

With slim fingers he plucks the flower gently from his coat and presents it to the girl.

“Aye,” he smiles, speaking loudly enough for the immediate vicinity to hear. “But it is not the prettiest flower in the room.”

Her smooth hands grasp it and she threads the stem through a loop in her dress above the breast. It is mismatched against the brown and green of it but makes her eyes and lips widen with gratitude.

Beaming, moves away just a step before remembering to turn and nod her head with poorly practiced refinement.

He bows back and catches a glimpse of the seething pack of girls who pretend to have lost interest. The young girl with his flower skips happily to a small crowd and disappears.

Robb hates bullies. He always had. Though he had strayed once or twice before from his parent’s teachings, they had instilled in him with what he decided was a deep sense of fairness.  A sense of fairness that he believes has led him to his current calling, he couldn’t simply sit by and do nothing while the largest children in the schoolyard romped about with disregard to who was caught beneath their feet. If that meant fighting to prove the point, he was fine with that, if that meant risking harm to his life and his honour by engaging in what he was now engaging in then he would accept that too.

The song comes to a slow close until the hall is immersed with polite and soft claps. The dancers congratulate their partners with quiet praise and genteel nods. Some men and women fade from the floor and back to the crowds before a small wave of people move in to replace them.

You could hardly tell there was a war going on. That is the thought most disturbing Robb. There is some anger at that also, but beyond that a kind of acceptance. Anger that while men some distance away are dying for what they believe in these people celebrate, drink and feast, seemingly without thought. Acceptance that he cannot know the stories of all these people, what they or their loved ones have or will suffer for as long as the fighting continues, what secret sadness’s those in the crowd nursed that could not see the light of day.

The men numbered few compared to the women so few of them left the floor in an attempt to better spread the number of dances. He watches as the string instruments hum back to life and is grateful none of the hovering women have plucked up the courage to ask him to join. He goes to a more secluded area and speaks politely to several around a table on the weather and on congresses latest proclamations but adds little of his own words to the conversation, those he does are small and indirect digs towards deciphering the use or lack thereof of those around him. They seem little but shopkeepers and skilled workers, worried like everyone else of news of how the war goes, though not perhaps for the same reason.

Before the talks conclude he finds his eyes soon drawn away and back to a familiar figure. The girl again. She moves haphazardly through the crowds and towards him, her arm stretched out behind her and connected to another, paler and enclosed in a sheer cloth up to the elbow, upon its edges and wrapped delicately Robb sees his own flower laying across her skin.

Out of the crowd he finally sees the woman in trail emerge proper. With a smirk she giggles as she’s dragged towards the table, her chestnut hair is coiled and curled about the head and then flowing at the back and over a shoulder.

Robb excuses himself and returns to his feet as they near him, his eyes connect with the brown of hers and there’s a girlish giggle below them both as the young lady almost crashes them in to one another.

They stop and the girl straightens into an attempt at a curtsey. It is followed by a perfectly refined albeit brief one by the older woman, performed with an indication of years of practice.

She smiles widely as he moves his head into a reserved bow.

“I am told I simply must meet the hero of Philadelphia before he vanishes into the night like some mythic creature.” She rolls her eyes and her voice is tinged with a feigned awe. A smaller hand is still wrapped around her own, just beneath his flower, it tugs gently every few seconds as if a part of some secret game known only to her.  The woman continues: “Tell me, do you give gifts and do kindly deeds for all the women you encounter or only the heiresses among them?”

The words confuse him until he deciphers their meaning. Looking down he studies the girl for a moment. _Young girls can be so jealous and petty._

“Would that I have known my flower was to be so enjoyed and by such beautiful women, I would have brought more.” He finally supplies as his eyes return to hers.

She gives him a slow, evaluating look that makes him feel anxious before it fades and the is replaced by something sterner.

“You don’t belong here.” She decides. “Mr…?”

 _Well that was an illustrious spying career_ , he thinks, grinning. He watches as the child between them leaves for a table and the fresh serving of treats upon it.

“Stark. Robb Stark. And what makes you say that?”

There’s a kind of predation to the way she stares, like he’s a fly caught in her web, he imagines the sensations he’s feeling aren’t so dissimilar.

“You don’t have the same sort of look about you as the usual Pennsylvanian Tory merchants do. And your accent is a little more northern, though how far so I cannot guess.”

“You’re very observant.” He notes.

She leans forward just enough, as if she’s sharing a secret. The smell of roses in her perfume can just faintly be made out. “We all have to be nowadays, between the oaths and the tarring mobs there’s little room for people like us not to be.”

He had heard of the tarrings before Philadelphia. In Massachusetts at the start of the troubles, where overzealous patriots had stripped customs officers who dealt in British goods and thrown the hot over their skin followed by a collection of feathers for humiliation. The engravers and the satirists had loved to share the spectacle of it in what they contributed to the pamphlets and posters put about the camps and the towns he’d seen. A discomfort settles about him at the thought of it, but he shrugs it off as quickly as it comes. He knows they can’t be picky with their allies and that a few bad apples shouldn’t be allowed to spoil the bunch.

Oaths were a new phenomenon for him. He’s already got the documents for his own oath, his word as a loyalist in the city that he would not harm the Rebels cause or disobey curfews when set. He never actually made one, but Mormont had said it could help him play the part.

He thinks about her skin, her pale skin. Imagines burns from the tar, imagines other things he knows happen in times of war such as these. He grips his hand on a button along his coat and can feel it imbed sharply into his skin. “You’ve had trouble?” he asks as he distances himself an inch, his words clipped and worried.

Her dress moves a touch as he imagines she kicks her feet. Her voice is lower now and almost shy despite the impish streak he senses. “Not that much, though things were scary for a while. When the rebels rose…  my family and I hid out in the country for a time. Not many of our things remained when we returned. Hence this...” She waves a hand at her dress as if there is something about it he would notice, something out of place. He sees nothing but a dress, a dress and the woman within it. Struggling with his words he fancies for a moment that he could praise her gown, but the moment passes awkwardly and silently as he struggles to find the right words.

Her hand brushes a lock of her hair behind an ear and she smiles, dismissing some of the sadness that etched the edges of her face. “But enough about me. What brings you to Philadelphia, sir?”

“The college. I’m to attend come the new intake.”

“One of my brothers has the privilege of attending. Do you know him?”

“I’ve met no prospective course-mates, I’ve only been in the city a week and, I know little of the people here.”

“Do you know the Tarly’s? The Redwyne’s? Or the Fossoway’s have you met them?

He shakes his head after every question, suddenly feeling very underprepared for the sudden quizzing he’s receiving.

She speaks with the final shake, a sly smirk forms on her lips. “I’m struggling, Mr Stark. If you don’t know the Fossoways how did you come to be invited to their party?”

He looks about uneasily at her deduction and chastises himself, for if a young woman has managed to so unreel him with a few questions how could he fair against the larger fish in the pond.

He raises a finger to answer, but she cuts him off abruptly with a smile. “No matter. Your secret is safe with me. Though I shall withdraw your reasoning eventually.”

He smiles back uneasily and brushes his hand through his hair as she continues her inquisition.

“Dr Smith? Have you met him?”

He had heard of Parson Smith, the provost of the college who had been there since before either him or this woman had been born. Robb had read around the pamphlets and articles of the city for weekend homework. Smith was known as a learned man, even as much as Dr Franklin, with doctorates from near every university and college in Christendom. He was also rumoured in rebel circles as a Tory sympathiser. “I haven’t had the honour yet, though I do know of him.”

“I would be worried if you did not.” She responds. “He has dined at Highgarden Manor once before and I have heard nothing but good news of him. If he were to dine again, I would mention you to him, Mr. Stark.”

He nods. “I’m grateful that you would do that for me.”

“Then at least there would be someone who knows you in the city. Besides myself and my young friend that is.” She teases, pointing towards the girl at the table chewing on lemon cakes and berry tarts, making a mess of the tablecloth with crumbs and streaks of currant and curd.

The older woman’s eyes widen as the tablecloth is almost pulled down and she plucks the younger into her arms with a smile. Robb looks over and laughs quietly at the sight, “It’s been a pleasure meeting you both.” He says as the girl twists to face her captor.

The child tries to open her hand and Robb can hear the mess force her fingers folded again. “Margy, my hands are sticky.”

Margy rolls her eyes and half-grimaces when the hand nears her dress. She places the girl back to the ground again and grabs her gently by the wrist, preparing to leave. “Then we should go to the ladies room and wash them before you ruin either of our dresses. Say goodbye to Mr Stark.”

Gone as quickly as they came the both of them move into the length of the hall, he watches until they disappear around a corner, _Margy_ makes a small turn at the last moment and shoots him an embarrassed smile.

Not long after their disappearance the band ends and there’s a quiet ruckus across the building, in a room currently being used as a gentleman’s lounge for cigars and brandy.

Men congregate around from near and far, some passing Robb and one drunkenly even patting him on the back before drawing his comrades into short embraces trimmed with joy and laughter.

Robb flows with the crowd and through a narrow wooden doorway of the adjoining room. The roof there is sunken slightly and not tall as a result, tall men in the room crouch in order not to bang their heads.

A man at the end with a thick moustache and goatee and gammon-like skin roars has some of the crowd roaring with celebration at what he says, but Robb cannot hear over the noise.

Somebody taps him again, and he half expects the young girl to be on his heels, but it is not her. A house servant offers him one of a selection of glasses from a shiny metal tray.

“What is this all about?” He asks as he takes a random drink from the man.

There’s no joy in his voice as he says it, it’s almost monotone in its delivery. “Final news of the battles in New York and Long Island have reached. The rebels have been thrown from the city.”

Robb thanks the man for the information and half-listens to grumbles about the mess that will be made as a result. He surveys the crowd and sees some men cry in sheer gratitude at the news, some others sing old regimental songs half-forgotten.

With time the noise fades as the chiming of glass cuts through. The rotund man with the pink face at the head of the room raises his drink and shouts. “God save the king!” and the cry echoes throughout the room.

Robb repeats the words to fit in, he does so  in a quiet mutter, raising his glass slightly and watching the candlelight dance in the vivid redness of the liquid.

 

* * *

 

The city feels changed. More than just the fire though. Though the flames have all died the place is still a living hell. What feels changed is the vice and corruption now visible underneath the cracks of the surface, where once it had just festered in the alleys and the taverns. He doesn’t dislike it, it’s just different.

As red rag men, tory militiamen who wish to distinguish their own mismatched outfits from that the patriots wear, pass he pulls his hat down an inch, sticks to the shade and the shadows between the smoky ruins.

Some houses still linger, but much of the city is gone now, some to the flames. A great deal of the populous fled north and west, fleeing the red tide that came. And a slightly smaller number had returned to their homes with that tide. Torytown was Torytown once more.

Theon hasn’t heard anything of his side really. Of Washington’s boys, of the dragoons or the militia rifles he had once moved with. He’s been hiding out in barns and ditches for the last two weeks, cobbling together just enough to pass as a civilian. He had barely avoided the rangers and frontiersman in Connecticut and along the tip of Long Island after he had paid everything he had for a crossing, his next ferry across to the city had only just avoided raiding parties crossing the Long Island Sound, those trying to pick up prominent members of either side for ransom and interrogation. It wasn’t anything special that saved him from either, just luck. Pure, dumb luck. Luck that didn’t save his men, that didn’t save the man whose execution he had just watched.

The image haunts him. The swinging of the young man’s body from the tree and the small noises he had seemed to make that weren’t discernible among the voices of the crowd.  He knows that the punishment for spying will stay in his mind for as long as he still has wits to call his own. Stay in his mind like so many recent images no doubt will.

He hasn’t slept in two days.

The waking dreams that prevent it are filled with the clapping of hammers and the faint poofs of powder that smoke and fizzle but do not erupt fully. The trees and the earth around him spins as the men he has known for months are put down like dogs.

His feet still hurt, even in the new boots he had stolen, even after he had wrapped them so purposefully. They hurt in the mud and on the cobbles and now along the stone of the churchyard.

He knows where those weary feet have taken him as soon as he sees the abortionists and the astrologers who have set-up by the entrance, he hadn’t aimed for it but he has returned. Returned to the last place that he felt comfortable.

He passes through and sees the Cracks and Fireships continuing to offer their services, as they had when he was in the city before.  The uniforms may have changed, and the army stationed may have changed, but they remain a constant, along with the sight of men dicing and drinking in the street.

Tents sway in the sour breeze and the wet scurry of rats can just be heard in the murky water below the wooden beams that keep the platforms afloat.

His feet are unsteady as he moves along the planks, almost drunk with exhaustion. Some men pass him without paying any mind, then some more. Holy Ground is busy tonight, parishioners from near and far have all come in seek of those things offered in a place like this.  Another group moves as he turns a corner. One, a larger and slower looking man with a full beard edged with burst blood vessels and sweaty, sated flesh, moves close to him, too close for Theon not to think about it.

With a movement he feigns a trip into the man along the narrow beams. His hands come into contact with some pudge beneath a red overcoat and then what he’s looking for. He’s pushed heavily to the side and into the brick of the wall which is slippery with the memory of rain.

“’Pardon…” Theon belches in a mock drunkenness as he rumbles along his knees and takes his time to regain his feet.

The men look to him dismissively for a moment until they walk off. He watches for a moment to see if they notice but they continue unimpeded into the darkness of the night. Before they fade the young man is about the corner, smiling and feeling the heft of a new coin purse in his palm.

A light beams out from the tent which glows yellow like a lantern in the night. There are no sounds from it as there are from others, so he knows she isn’t entertaining anyone.

His feet carry him through the entrance and onto the tight boards he had helped her nail down before the Autumn. Everything else he buries within himself just for now, just for a moment’s peace.

She hears him enter but doesn’t turn. Her russet hair is balled in curls which he can see the back of, small strays run along the bottom, dark and clinging damply to her skin.

“I’ll just be a minute.” She says. An Irish glint to her voice as she pulls one long and creamy leg out of her washtub and runs the cloth along it. Small droplets run down the sides and glisten in the candle-light, she makes a show of it, she does for a lot of things. He has noticed.

“I won’t need a minute.” He replies, before he glows red with embarrassment, the way he often does around her. That obviously wasn’t what he meant to say.

Her back straightens a little at the recognisable voice, but she still doesn’t turn. She speaks again as she does the same with her other leg. “I thought you’d gone off to fight your war. For freedom, you said.” The words are uttered in an _I told you so_ manner that he brushes off.

There’s a small gust following him into the tent, and he’s suddenly wary, so he tightens the drawstrings and closes the entrance behind him. “Keep it down, before the whole of New York hears.”

“Believe me, if New York heard half of the things that happened in these tents the exploits of Theon Greyjoy wouldn’t even make the top one thousand scandals.” The edge of her face is visible as he approaches and he can smell the rose oil she uses. She smiles and flashes of white teeth show before he’s fully behind her.

“Oh really?” He challenges as he sits down at a stool he drags behind her, his fingers dip low into the warmth of the water and then trail up and to her shoulders, gently moving over the pale skin there. His next words are a whisper into her ear which he scrapes his teeth over. “And there I was thinking I was so important to you.”

She leans into his touch and further so she can see his face hanging over hers. His stubbled and dirty face, still so cocky after everything he’d been through.

“So many important men in my life…” She teases. “British officers, Rebel officers, Tavernkeepers, even Priests. I’ve been a very busy girl.”

He’s jealous, so much so it makes him hurt, but he doesn’t let it show, just buries it down deep where even he will struggle to find it again. He doesn’t tell her what he wants to say to her, how he feels everything he does seems futile and all he wants is to cry in her arms.

He smiles. Smiles to keep himself from weeping and she exhales against his ministrations before he creeps his fingers down from her shoulder until they brush over pink and small nipples that sit just above the waterline. They linger there for a few moments, playing to the point where her cheeks and her belly are blushing from the heat of his touch.

With time and after throaty gasps her red lips widen until he captures them in his own. The sleeve of his stolen shirt becomes clear as his arm traces the muscle of her stomach and lower into the water. It makes him feel useful for the first time in a long time.

“I thought you’d be back…” She admits with a whisper as he twists around her. Her breath hitches in his face with the pressure of his touch.

He chuckles, amused at how she moves under him. He plants another kiss to her neck which he hopes will mark her, mark her as his to anyone who comes by. Another kiss is pressed against her shoulder for the same reason. “What made you think that?” He wonders. But she doesn’t answer, just breaths and moans so gently he can barely hear it, the way he hopes she only does for him.

 


	4. Chapter 4

Ned flips the sabre over in his hand. It’s dazzlingly beautiful, well crafted. Strange and yet still so unbelievably familiar that he has had to check that it is not his own.

The loop guard looks so delicate that he is scared that it could break under his inspection. The silver pommel looks as if it has seen better days and the whole thing could do with a good clean down, but the words are still visible despite that:

_Ne me tire pas sans raison, Ne me remette point sans honneur._

Ned reads the words aloud, clearly, like he has done a hundred times before.

“Do you know what it means, Jon?” He asks the young man in front of him, still studying the blade, practicing some movements to see how it caught the air. It was far too fine for someone so young, someone without any apparent wealth to his name.

The stranger hesitates for a moment before he responds; one arm aches as he pushes up a loose thin sleeve of his borrowed shirt. All the rest of his clothes were too far gone to save bar his jacket which is folded neatly at the edge of the table.  “No, Sir.”

The older man leans into the back of his wooden chair and sheathes the sword into its scabbard with a smooth noise. He places the weapon along the side table and studies his guest, not suspiciously, but with something akin to interest. It reminds Jon of a priest almost; _perhaps that’s what he is._ Within the past few days as he has begun to recover his strength, Jon had spoken to each member of the family, briefly at least, but still not managed to divine exactly what it is that Sir Eddard Stark does.

Ned goes to speak again but Jon interrupts him before he can: “I didn’t steal it.” The boy’s face goes slightly morbid, but not in an unaccustomed way, like he has been accused of this sort of thing before, enough to assume that was going to be the next question.

Old eyebrows flecked with grey furrow but he tries to keep his face soft and accommodating. “I did not say you did. But it is a very interesting sword.”

“It was my-” He catches himself before continuing, corrects himself mid-sentence, there is a slight sluggishness to the words that must be from the medicine,“- **is** my uncle’s.”

“And he served in the French/Indian wars?”

Jon nods and Ned traces his mind for a Snow in the snow, someone else of his group who had braved the winter in the north with Braddock only to return in failure and destitution after he was killed.

 _Benjen_. He realises after a little while, the veil of memory slowly lifting. “Benjen Snow.” He says aloud and wondered where the others of the dozen had fallen on each side in this damnable war.

Jon nods again and smiles widely, proudly, almost as if the actions that earned the group both Ned and Benjen belonged to their swords were his own.

 _Just a boy,_ Ned thinks, but he guesses this boy must have seen and done things no boy should to get here, evading loyalist militia patrols this far into Long Island. Done things not unlike what Ned and Benjen once had to do to survive. Things that he hoped his boys would never have to do, _wherever they were._

Ned’s thoughts go to a day in the past, the taste of scorched earth on his tongue and the screams of women and children on his ears. He shuffles his awkward legs in the chair and remembers the dullness of one before he breaks the silence, damning whatever god allowed this coincidence: “I fought with Benjen Snow” He says quietly, carefully, not wanting to use words like: was, is, knew. “Good man. Good soldier. I imagine you followed his footsteps?”

“He raised me after my mother died.” Jon says sadly, “He taught me what it is to be a man. To take responsibility for my life. To know right from wrong.” His eyes narrowed in what Ned thought to be self-hatred.

“I am sure there would be few finer men for such a job, and I’m sure that he did do a good job” Always finer. Finer than I ever was. “How did you come to be on Long Island?”

Jon’s eyes move to the floor and he mumbles. “A lot of us got separated in the battle, my regiment was cut off. We tried to hold the line but were pushed back through the marshes and the lakes all the way to the treelines by the north coast. We couldn’t hold, every way we turned there were just more of them. Uncle Benjen led the last group into surrender while we ran. But there were other boats in the water.” His hand moves lightly over his side where his wound was, the only visible wound at least, Ned knows all too well that the deepest were sometimes invisible. “I went overboard, landed far down the coast of the island. Spent the last few days crawling through the ditches until I thought I found a nice barn to stay the night.”

“Did you see him surrender?”

He shakes his head. “No.”

Ned notes what is being unsaid between them, that if Jon didn’t see him surrender then perhaps surrender was never accepted. “I will write a letter and enquire into his location. It shouldn’t seem too odd for me to do so given our past, but obviously there are limits with what I can say and do.”

Jon stares, bewildered. “Why would you do that for me?” he asks, “Why would you help me?”

There’s a beat, barely brief enough to be noticed before Ned stands slowly, putting a little weight into his stick. He walks over to the table where the sabre and the buff and blue jacket sits and traces his hand along them, imagining what his own son would look like in something similar, imagines where he could be.

“Because it is the right thing to do.” He finally says but then slightly chastises himself for not mentioning his fears, those dark phantoms that clawed at his mind in the night. “I had a choice in front of me, Jon, a hard one; the important ones always are hard. You’re going to have to make a choice soon too.”

“Are you a Tory or a Patriot?”

He resents the question, but he doesn’t show it, he writes it down mentally as the nature of young men he who could no longer remember when things were not so binary. “Can I not be both,” he says, now looking at the other man again, “or neither? The reality is, I have no real love for either side in this war and I am tired with having to choose between supporting the King and being a traitor to the new regime or supporting the rebellion and being a traitor to the old. Truthfully, whichever side wins this fight, I shall lose. Which is always the nature in civil wars.”

Jon lingers over the words but then his face screws up slightly like there is a bad taste in his mouth. “But-”he tries to say before starting again, his voice almost cracking, either from some pain or under the scandal of what the older man has said, “Can’t you see what they’ve done? The slaughters and the destruction? We’re nothing like that.”

Ned smiles softly. “Give me an hour or two to go out to town and I wager I could find you a young loyalist militiaman who would say exactly the same thing about your side, Jon.” He moves slightly closer and places a hand on his shoulder which Jon does not shrug off. “Everyone is the hero of their own story. Think about that for a little while you rest. Think about that and the choice you are going to have to make.”

“What choice are you talking about?”

“When you’re well enough to move on your own you’re free to go. I won’t tell anyone that you’ve been here as long as you do the same, I’ll give you what supplies you need to get back to the lines.” He pauses a moment, just a moment, but presses on wanting to appear decisive and genuine. “You have obviously fought hard; your wounds are a testament to that. But if you are sick of it, the war, the killing, I can give you a way out.”

“I’m not going to the prison ships.” Jon shrugs and his head shakes slightly.

“I’m not talking about the ships, Jon.” He feels unsure about what he is saying but isn’t trying to look it. _If my sons said no, why would a stranger with a familiar name accept_? “If you stay I will shelter you to the best of my ability. You are obviously not a native to the island; your accent marks that, so there’s no chance of you being recognised. I can give you a job, a place to stay, and you can wait the whole war out if it pleases you.”

“Just promise me you’ll think it over.” He entreats.

The boy nods, if somewhat reluctantly, and Ned presses the issue no further. His hand leaves his shoulder and he begins to turn to leave. “Rest well, Jon.”

Jon’s eyes look weary. But he seems at least to be putting some consideration into the offer. The cogs in his head turn and it isn’t until Ned is almost out of the door before he speaks again. “What do they mean? The words on the sword?”

Ned turns; it is an event within itself with one hand on the door and the other at his stick by his side. “Draw me not without reason, Sheath me not without honour.”

 


	5. Chapter 5

The rain patters gently in the streets and in the alleys; so quietly that it almost cannot be heard. Theon moves cautiously by the familiar houses, the blacks of which in the night are only slightly darker than the sky.

A redcoat patrol moves through, marching by the docks and into the surrounding streets. They guard the wealthiest of the merchants and the customs officials as they make their way off into the city proper and back to their beds. A small few linger here and there by the warehouses and the storefronts with less than welcoming faces, they give Theon another reason to turn back, to put it all off, as if he didn’t have enough already.

He hesitates for a moment and pulls up the collar on his coat. Hugging a long wall he  avoids the bigger crowds and the brighter lights, making his way by the smaller wharfs where the thinner looking fishermen flog the last of the day’s wares desperately and hope to go home to their families, grateful to have made it back with all the privateers and pirates cruising the bay and the sound. The catch isn’t particularly impressive but Theon supposes that the best of it must have gone hours ago, sold to the few who could afford fresh fish in times like these.

A group of street kids move by the smaller warehouses and the salesmen, hands open in hope for something, anything to sate the cold emptiness of their stomachs.

He watches them and moves over to a lonely looking shack on the edge of the walk and leans in as if he’s really interested in some of the greyer looking pan-fish left to sit in the rock salt. The seller gives him a small disinterested look and says nothing, returning to whittling something blocky and crude from a piece of soft wood.

The young man counts the ships he can see in the area, he doesn’t mean to; it’s just habit, a habit drilled into him through years. That’s when he notices the whaleboats beyond the wharf don’t look like they usually do. Gun ports have been cut into the framing, two to each side. The planking has been strengthened. And more than the main, fore, and jib sails there now stood topsails and flying jibs.

“Good catching out there?” he asks and puts a half penny into the man’s hand, taking a few of the smaller catch and wrapping them into thick paper.

“Nah. Not for fish that is. Hard to earn a trade when the boats are ready to pluck you out of the water, take your ship.”

“It’s that bad out there?”

The man shrugs and then coughs before he spits to the ground beside the stall. “Navy is doing patrols but some of them smaller craft have been and gone by the time the patrol boats can come around to get a proper look. Safer catching spots are getting crowded, we’re gonna have to push out deeper in search of something else.”

“Everywhere is getting crowded at the minute.” Theon says and nods his head back towards the street kids. One of the other vendors has given a fish to one of them and they bite into it, raw and still scaled, it makes Theon’s stomach more unsteady. “Is that how they usually get fed?”

“Some do begging. Some do stealing. Lots of the younger girls going out to Holy Ground and taking up the trade nowadays, the way they always do when it’s all they got to sell anymore. Boys who stand tall enough can enlist with the militias or the navy, but I don’t even think the press gangs want some of them lot, as thin and starved as they are.”

“They’re still recruiting heavily?”

“You can pick the recruiting officers in the tavern if you’re not down with a militia already. Maybe you should, you look like you’ve seen better days.”

He’s grateful for the information, thought it may seem self-evident. He looks down at his misfit clothes, a stolen waistcoat he must leave unbuttoned for how tightly it fits, an oversized shirt that looks as baggy as a cloth sack.

“Hmmm…” he wonders and waits a moment before working up the courage to ask. It is a guess, a risky one that he shouldn’t be making because it’s nothing to do with him, but the haunting memory chimes again and he feels compelled. He doesn’t even know if they’re stationed in York City.

“Maybe I should join the Rangers?” He finally says. “If they’re still stationed in New York.”

The man looks up and for the first time Theon has his full attention. “Maybe you should.” He replies cautiously, in a manner that makes the younger man feel he’s guessed right. Then he leans inward an inch. “Or maybe you should all shove off and leave me to my business.”

The man does not move for a few seconds and neither does Theon until the fisherman’s eyes travel over his shoulder and towards the storage houses several dozen yards away where the flash of red coats are visible in the dull lamp light.

He pays the man a few pennies more, he’s happy to if it will keep away the attention and when it isn’t his money. Then he takes his papered goods before he continues on his way.

 

* * *

 

The house looks like it has seen better days. It looks smaller, more cramped looking than it had before and the dishevelled thatch and blackened stone shows evidence of the city’s recent fire.

Theon watches a flicker of light and sees a figure move inside. It turns his stomach.

He waits. Waits and watches and feels the boards underneath him that lead up to the house give slightly with his weight, the way they never seemed to when he was a boy.

The shallows by the house and the run creek gently with pond life as if nothing is amiss in the night. They ignore his presence, ignore his heavy breaths as he tries but fails to work-up the courage to walk down and knock on the door, to see them all again.

He’s larger than he ever was at home but he has never felt so small before.

The light within the house flickers once more and then gutters out as it is finally snuffed, the inside of the house is plunged into a blacks like the pools of water around him.

Theon’s eyes move from the building and down into the water where he can barely see his reflection in the nothingness.

He remembers running. Remembers how the pools of water would splash as he ran along the boards, springing against the wood with each step.

Maron and Rodrik would chase him when they were on shore leave, kindly some of the time, not so kindly on others. One day he had run from their teasing when they were both men enough to have known better, he ran straight down the path and into his mother’s arms. When his father had caught up he had admonished her for coddling him and him for crying like a girl. He was better then, though oft cold and distant, still kinder and more caring than the man he would become.

A small wind moves him from memory and makes Theon adjusts his hair into a tighter knot before he pulls up his hood and turns his back. He almost expects his brothers to be there but they are not, and neither are their ghosts. They are nowhere but beneath the shifting waves. He is the only ghost here.

Theon’s feet leave the run and go back to the dirt path and to the city’s edge where the buildings are less crowded and not so smoked damaged.  It doesn’t take much more walking before he can see the Episcopal Church, washed in white paint and lit up like a beacon in the night. He watches a while to see if anyone enters or leaves but the windows although showing light escaping from within are boarded shut as they have been since he had last been here.

The lock on the gate is easy enough to pick, though the young man wishes that he hadn’t thrown the key away with his militia clothes.

With a twist of his wrist and a small tug the chains on the gate unlock and he catches them before they make any sound and fall further against the bars.

With a low, slow squeak the gate opens and Theon’s feet step slowly in. He moves by the brick and the wood of the wall until he can feel the angled hatch of the basement.

Through the hatch there is furniture - some pews, an older pulpit and a workbench for their repair. The room smells of sawdust, books and the strange adhesive used for tome-binding. He pushes through the silence and to the back of the wood wall where he pats around in the darkness for something.

His hands meet a crack in the wood that he manoeuvres as gently as he can until the wall itself moves and the alcove behind is revealed.

The alcove is darker than the rest of the room but the edges of small crates and barrels can barely be made out. Theon smiles and positions himself closer on his knees as he begins to smell the dried teas and herbs he had hidden long ago. His hand trails into a barrel and he can feel the softness of silk within, already he has mentally spent half of what it would fetch him on the black market, things that he and Ros could put towards leaving or for a place of their own.

Then there’s something else in the dark, but not in the hidden position on the wall. Behind him. The shuffling of feet and the creaking of wood. It’s already too late to turn before there is something in his back, hard and thin and not unlike the barrel of a musket.

His stomach drops and he chastises himself for not having watched the place longer, for not having waited and seen if someone had followed him from the docks.

“Who’s there?” he asks and comes from his knees as slowly as he is able to.

There’s no reply.

A few moments go by until there’s finally a nudge with the hard edge of the weapon and Theon turns.

The only real light in the room is that from the moon and cuts like a knife through basement’s hatch. It mingles with the warm, flickering light of the outside torches and is barely enough that Theon can recognise the man standing in front of him.

“Uncle?”

**Author's Note:**

> Just had to get all that written down while I had it in my head. Might turn this into a frequently updated ongoing based on feedback and completion of my other works.
> 
> Please leave feedback, sub, kudos, bookmark etc if you like it and want more.


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